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I Know What You Think of Me
71–80 of 114 posts
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article was on the HN front page some time ago: http://chronicle.com/article/I-Will-Ruin-Him/136693/ It sounds like your situation is similar, though perhaps less extreme.
Maybe, but I think this is fundamentally different. Threesome Girl did not have a real motive against me. In fact, we were still drinking buddies when I learned what she had been doing this whole time. There was no love interest, no need for revenge, nothing to gain from doing this. Yet, she did. And even more puzzling: a lot of people helped her, she always had a lot of social support. She was quite brilliant at tha…
There are people who just love to surround themselves with drama.
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#73I had a talk with a friend recently who is newly single, and it was clear to me that Facebook was making her crazy. She kept asking me questions about what people that were friends with her and her ex thought of her, or were saying behind her back, or were posting about her in a way that she couldn't see. It was an uphill battle, but I finally convinced her of the truth: nobody really talked about her or her ex that…
I heard a good joke about this: when you're 20, you're obsessed with what others think about you. When you're 40, you don't give a damn what others think about you. When you're 60, you realize others were never thinking about you at all.
Ran into a coworker on the elevator. We worked together on the same floor in the same department for a few years then I changed departments and floors and now we hardly see each other.
When she saw me on the elevator she said "I forgot you exist!"
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hesitate to quote Ayn Rand, but it's fitting: "Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us." "But I don’t think of you." -Ellsworth Toohey and Howard Roark, The Fountainhead , Ayn Rand
Michael Ginsberg: "I feel bad for you." Don Draper: "I don't think about you at all." (The irony of this line is that Draper, in fact, was obsessed with one-upping Ginsberg the whole episode.)
Things like this are what make Don Draper such a fantastic (and fantastically loathsome) character. He knows which buttons to push at which times. It is that quality that makes him both successful in his career and miserable in his life.
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#75When I was younger my mother used to tell me that the family that plays together stays together, and that's a pattern I've found repeated more generally in life: I tend to look at my friendship in terms of what people do with me. What activities we engage in together.
Interpretation is all well and good, but if you don't really do anything together what are they interpreting? It's a relationship built on dreams and imagination. And what do they really stand to lose in thinking poorly of you?
I'm actually constantly amazed by how strong friendships are, and how much people seem to respect each other. It seems like most people are only weakly friends, and that more by necessity than anything else. What interests do you really share with people? It's hard to think of having a really serious disagreement with someone from the office - you sympathise with them even if they'd be bores were you to meet them under other conditions.
From my perspective the world seems full of friendships and relationships that people invest heavily in emotionally and yet seem terrifyingly fragile. (Pretty amazing that they don't fall apart more regularly.) Maybe people would be happier and more secure if they paid more attention to the things they enjoy and the people they enjoy them with than being bothered about what just... other people... think of them - I don't know.
For myself, I know that I'd be very worried if it turned out that someone, even someone close to me, regularly spent a significant amount of their time just thinking about me. I have my own life and interests, and expect others to have theirs too - being elevated to some ideal of perfection in someone's world is a little creepy.
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#76If you want to have some fun, take a dance class, and then have someone videotape you dancing. It's usually pretty horrifying.
I went once with a friend to a club and he said that I really stand out of the crowd as a geek. I said: impossible, prove it. He took out his phone and recorded 30 seconds of me dancing. It took me watching just two seconds from this movie to realize he was right.
I don't frequent dance floors much since then. Still haven't got over it.
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#77I had a talk with a friend recently who is newly single, and it was clear to me that Facebook was making her crazy. She kept asking me questions about what people that were friends with her and her ex thought of her, or were saying behind her back, or were posting about her in a way that she couldn't see. It was an uphill battle, but I finally convinced her of the truth: nobody really talked about her or her ex that…
Just for fun, I'd like to throw in my opposite experience. A few years ago I was quite active on FB, you know, posting random thoughts and music videos and stuff like that. The stuff I posted was indeed random, just things I liked and wanted to share based on mood and ...well randomness. But unbeknownst to be, an acquaintance of mine, who was at the time engaged in a horribly soapy love triangle, got it into her head…
It's like you suffered the worst parts of an affair without any of the benefit.
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#78I’ve often thought that the single most devastating cyberattack [would be] simply to simultaneously make every e-mail and text ever sent universally public. . . . . the fabric of society would instantly evaporate, every marriage, friendship and business partnership dissolved. I don't think it would be quite that bad. There are some people who lie to everyone, but there are also some people who are decent and honest.…
In this passage the author is using satire. Of course it wouldn't be that bad, but describing literally how it would be, wouldn't be that funny.
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also 35 and feel exactly the same way. This often gets me in trouble with my wife when she exclaims "how could x have done y!" and I proceed to stick my foot in mouth by saying "maybe they were thinking z".
I'm not 35 but I often try to defuse situations with my wife just this way : "Neither of [us/them] meant evil, so let's just get over it"
Hanlon's razor fits really well here.
"Don't attribute to malice what you can to stupidity."
Re: I Know What You Think of Me
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe, but I think this is fundamentally different. Threesome Girl did not have a real motive against me. In fact, we were still drinking buddies when I learned what she had been doing this whole time. There was no love interest, no need for revenge, nothing to gain from doing this. Yet, she did. And even more puzzling: a lot of people helped her, she always had a lot of social support. She was quite brilliant at tha…
There are people who just love to surround themselves with drama.
Exactly, I know some people in real-life, immediate family members, people I can't easily ignore even if I want to, who just loves to feed on drama.
I usually try to stay away from drama queens like my sanity depends on it, but when family members do it, not easy or (always right) to ignore them. I tried to explain, rationalize, reason with them and their drama ways; but it didn't help much.
I think drama loving people are kind of addicted to how it makes them feel.